Menu

Who I Am After Three Years of Blogging

Today, I’ve been cleaning up my blog and taking small steps to make it more useful and accessible to readers. If you’re a frequent reader, you’ll probably notice me tweaking the layout and categories and tags in the coming weeks. For today, I was just reviewing some of my older posts, things I haven’t seen or thought about in years.

This incarnation of my blogging life began when I started my current job a little more than two years ago, but I was blogging before that as a paraprofessional, as well. When I became a librarian, I had a lot of things to face up to right away. Not only was it my first job as a librarian, but I was alone as a branch manager in a new county with two teammates to supervise and really high expectations for how many programs I would provide each week. If you read my posts from the early days, bless you. I was struggling. HARD. My posts were about how overwhelming everything was and how I was making mistakes. SO. MANY. MISTAKES. I knew my blog was a kind of confessional and I thought that had some merit, too.

Others were talking about their storytime plans, their visions for how youth services should be structured and valued, and how we can better the field. I didn’t think I had anything to contribute to that at first. I was twenty-five when I stepped into my big role as a librarian and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just knew, even then, that no one should feel alone in that kind of confusion. So I wrote about it, all the while hoping it would mean something to some other lost newbie one day.

As time went by, I got better and more confident. With big responsibilities to handle, I grew rapidly and now with just two years under my belt, I’m understanding and operating on a level that’s much, much higher than I would have if I’d been a low-level librarian in a big system among dozens of others just like me. My early years have been a trial by fire that forced me to find a way that was all my own.

I realized that my work was broad and significant and deep as a small-town/rural librarian and that there wasn’t enough recognition in the world for this caste of librarians who compose roughly 80% of the public library field. So I started speaking to how my work varies from urban libraries and how powerful that can be.

I understood that the way I was feeling–burdened and exhausted to the point of depression–wasn’t the way that anyone should feel in any career. I started sticking up for myself, saying no and negotiating lower expectations, asking for more staff.

I started building relationships with my local peers and better ones with my co-workers. I was supportive and created a way for us to get to know each other. (The first SU local chapter.) When I did, I found that my co-workers came to my defense more readily. They listened to me in staff meetings and became my allies. My peers in other libraries shared their resources and knowledge and gave me a place to vent. They encouraged me.

One day, I was surprised to feel that I had my own unique voice in the blogging world of librarians. I used it to lift up other people and to understand what kinds of needs existed. I started focusing on more school-age content, information about how to be a community builder in a small town, and child development.

I volunteered to be a Joint Chief for Storytime Underground and was also selected as a director for my state’s youth services board. I’ve been trying to use both to connect people and make sure that no one needs to feel isolated.

When I look back at those first posts from a couple years ago, I feel like a completely different person and part of me is embarrassed by how vulnerable I was. Still, I remember twenty-five year old Brytani fondly and I want better things for her and I’m leaving all that content, but hoping that no one needs it.